JavaScriptural Exegesis

Excerpt

If we're going to be so religious about our standards and patterns, why not use religious tools to analyze and improve them?

Exegesis is a tool for nuance and understanding in the absolutes found on bikesheds everywhere, such as "replace all vars with const" and "arrow functions will save your eternal soul".

Description

If we insist on being religious with our JavaScript, perhaps it’s time to use religious tools to improve it—enter exegesis.

Do you know where “arrow functions” came from, before they were introduced in ES2015? How about let/const? Or async/await? Better still, what was the “cultural context” of these language features originally, and of their specifications now? Why did the authors of these languages introduce the feature in the first place, and to what audience? These questions and more are wrapped up in this process of textual criticism (or “hermeneutics”, for my philosophy nerds out there), and they provide a framework for understanding The New JavaScript™ better, making us better as programmers along the way.

This talk is about the process of exegesis, applied to some exciting new and forthcoming features of JavaScript, and the nuance we can glean from those storied origins.

Tags

javascript, es6, es2015, culture

Speaking experience

I organize and speak at events in Bellingham, WA. I've spoken at events in Boston, Seattle, and Vancouver.

Speaker

Biography

I want to make art. I’ll even use a paintbrush, if it’s absolutely necessary.

Before I got a “real job” [Thanks, Dad…], I made video games. To the chagrin of my fellow consultants at Test Double, I still cling to many of the bottom-up, test-after habits I developed while pushing pixels and building digital worlds. The rest of the time, I toe the line: test-driving web applications and mentoring people of all stripes in empathetic, humane software development.

When not in my Cave, I co-organize the tech meetup for a small city in coastal Washington, pursue the odd hobby, and chase my partner and 2 kids.